Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  The cook, visible over the half wall around the kitchen, worked in a clean white T-shirt, a baseball cap backward on his shorn head. He sang show tunes as he flipped eggs, his foot tapping time. The whites of his eyes showed yellow against the dark of his skin, and she had a flash of Mama toward the end, the yellow seeping into her eyes, her hands, everywhere. Sometimes she’d be confused, not sure of the day or time, and sometimes she’d see Blue and light up, saying, “Come sit with me, baby, tell me a story.” Blue would sit down, feeling as though she’d been ripped into two jagged pieces. One half of her would long for the chance to escape, to run anywhere her mother wasn’t dying; the other half would hold Mama’s hand, determined to never let it go.

  They ordered pancakes and sausage and eggs and coffee and ate it all, never looking up from their plates. With food in her belly and the sun shining through the window and onto her bare arms, Blue felt her certainty begin to return. She could find Cass. She could find a corner and play her guitar and make some money, enough to have a place to sleep. She could hitch a ride, enough rides to get her where she needed to go; and as long as she kept playing, she’d have money. Maybe Steve would stay with her. After all, he didn’t really seem to have anyplace to go, and he didn’t know her real name, so they still had time.

  Steve swallowed the last of his coffee with a sigh. He’d drunk three cups, each one with five packets of sugar and a couple of hits of cream—more like syrup than coffee.

  “What song did you play last night?”

  Last night? Last night was the bus, and the singing driver, and . . . the church group. The man in the blue shirt, his grin—It’s a buyer’s market, little girl.

  Don’t think about that. Think about what you played. She couldn’t help her grin as she pulled out her notebook. Steve smiled back with sunny curiosity.

  Tell me to come to church with you, baby.

  Tish sang this one, Mama chiming in on harmony.

  This is what I’ll say, / That house you’re wanting me to enter / Ain’t any place to stay. / Show me something worth my worship, / A forest, just one tree, / The sweet taste of your neck now, / That’s true enough for me. / I ain’t got no time for hearing, / That who I am is wrong, / I ain’t got no time for hearing, / that we don’t belong. / I believe in your sweet touch, / I believe in me, / I believe those fires they’re fleeing / They’ve set their own damn selves.

  Steve came around to her side of the booth as she wrote. She paused, trying to remember the next line, and heard a small sound, almost like grinding teeth.

  Steve’s face—white, then dark red, the color racing in. “You—” he started, one hand punching against his leg. “How could you? You played that? You went to a Bible group and played that?”

  She looked around the diner. A few people looked back. It had been funny, playing Tish’s song to all those people who thought she was some innocent tool of God. It had been a joke, one Steve should have gotten.

  He clearly didn’t. “I can’t believe you. You were just making fun. Making fun of them. Of me.”

  What was he talking about? She wasn’t making fun of him. They’d been playing along. All those Bible verses, all of that . . . It had just been a game, one Steve understood because of his family.

  Only . . . Steve looked as if he were going to cry. Didn’t look like it—was actually crying. “I thought you were cool. I thought we were friends.” Before she could stop him, he’d grabbed his pack and left, stepping out the door and into the morning foot traffic.

  Blue didn’t run after him. She finished her coffee, paid the bill, and left the waitress a handful of change as a tip. It was a joke. He’d been living off her money and her playing, at least for the last few days; and she’d made a joke that didn’t even hurt the people there, since she was sure none of them had ever even heard of Dry Gully, let alone knew their songs.

  She hadn’t hurt anyone by playing the song. All she’d done was made it bearable for herself. If he didn’t get that, who cared? She didn’t.

  Only she did. Walking down the street, she felt Steve’s absence as keenly as if she’d lost her guitar. The sidewalks were crowded with people, the streets with cars, and yet every corner he wasn’t on felt as empty as each morning she’d woken without Cass in the bed across the room.

  Breakfast had shrunk her funds to under sixty bucks. Should she keep moving, or find a place to play and make some money? She was willing to bet that the Gully passed through Chicago. Cass had to have been here, maybe even still was. The clatter of traffic, the honk of the horn from the fourth phone call—they could have come from here.

  Come on, boots. Tell me where to go. The crowds were thinning as rush hour drew to a close. Time to move.

  She made a rookie mistake, walking herself round an entire block and returning to her start point. The boots should have known, she thought, and a thrill shot through her at the idea that there wasn’t a change because she’d located Cass.

  But when she tested out a left turn and walked a block away, there wasn’t a change, either. She was pretty sure the pull was stronger now than it had been in Maine, so maybe the problem was that the boots gave only general directions until she got close. Right now she needed to keep moving and remember not to take all left or all right turns.

  After ten minutes or so, she paused by an appliance store, waiting for the walk light in the intersection. She glanced over, looking first at her reflection in the glass, then at the image on the TV there. What she saw brought her to a dead stop.

  Final contestants chosen for Major Chord, the captioning read. New band Forgotten Highway features frontman Jed Radley and songbird Jill Brantwell. Forgotten Highway? What had happened to Mr. Chicken? To Bet and her careful artwork? There, stretched over a fifty-inch screen, were Jed and Jill, smiling, holding hands. “It’s a dream come true.” She could see Jed’s mouth moving. “It’s a great group of musicians showcased this year. Huge talent.”

  The screen flickered and they were gone. The honk of a horn, the change of a light, and she was gone as well.

  Eventually she reached Union Station. At first glance, she assumed it looked familiar because of movies. But surely she’d seen the pillars before. She could feel Tish’s arms holding her, hear Mama saying something about a delay, laughter, the rough canvas of Tish’s army surplus jacket gathered up in her fingers. They must have come to Chicago to play. She knew the building, the color of the sky above her, the way the noise echoed around her. Even the lines of the tall buildings to the side and the dark squares of their windows were familiar.

  They had been there, together. Happy. When? She’d been little, if Tish had been carrying her.

  “Looking for someone?” A man waited by her elbow, grinning as though he knew her. Reflex sent her sideways, away.

  He was about the same height as her. Tanned, but a fake tan, not the kind from a November trip to Florida. He kept his mouth almost completely closed, showing only a hint of teeth.

  She nodded. Should she have? Or should she walk away?

  “Beautiful day.” He stayed put, as if waiting for the same imaginary person. “That’s a lot of stuff you’re carrying. Where you coming from?”

  Stay clear of any man that comes up to you all friendly in a bus station, train stop, that kind of stuff. They come on all sweet, you know they’re trouble—that’s what Lou had said. Did this count as sweet?

  Didn’t matter. The answer was in the twist in her stomach. She gripped her guitar more tightly and headed toward the doors.

  The man kept pace with her. “Why don’t you let me carry that for you? You don’t want to wander around alone if your friend doesn’t show. I know what it’s like—big city, not knowing where to go. I can help you out. I’d be happy to.” His hand was on her guitar now, bumping against hers as she tried to walk faster. Not much farther to the door—then what? She imagined herself grabbing at passersby for help. Every encounter she envisioned ended with the police contacting Lynne to come get her.

&nbs
p; “Come on, lemme help. The city’s tough at first, but with a little help it can be a real nice place.” She’d been looking away, trying not to catch his gaze, but he kept moving closer. Her heart began to pound as she ran through everything she could remember from the self-defense class she’d had in gym.

  “Let’s start with your name.” Nudging as he walked, herding her away from the doors.

  She’d have to shove, and then . . . run?

  “Hey, been looking for you.” Now someone else was approaching. A girl, a little shorter than Blue, her dark hair done up in tiny pigtails, some of them blue, some black, a few wrapped with green thread. She had a ring through her nose, another through her lip, and she wore a black leather jacket.

  “Fuck off,” the man said. He tried to put his arm around Blue’s shoulder. She swung out with the guitar case, hitting him in the knee. She winced at the jangle from within.

  The girl grinned. “Fuck off yourself. Rat says he already talked this whole thing out with you. Says you should know better.”

  “Fuck Rat, too. He’s got no say over my business, and neither do you.” He opened his mouth wider now, and his teeth were jagged, yellow and brown. He stuck his thumb out at Blue. “You’re a bitch, too, but for your own good I’ll tell you that if you go with her, you’ll regret it. Rat’s no walk in the park.”

  “Yeah, like she’d listen to you. Get out of my face before things get serious.” The girl didn’t look half as tough as she talked, but the guy backed down. He left slowly, watching them as if he could light them on fire with his eyes.

  Nothing happened, though, beyond him leaving and the girl lighting up a cigarette. She offered it to Blue. Blue shook her head.

  “That, my friend, is a crappy little piece of humanity. Smart you, not going with him.”

  Blue shrugged. She didn’t trust the girl, either, but given the choice between the two, well, she’d made her choice.

  “Where you headed?”

  Not a yes-or-no question. She could walk off, or she could get out her notebook. Or she could try for a game of charades, but that was a stretch.

  Notebook it was.

  West.

  The girl’s eyes narrowed a little. “You deaf? Read lips?”

  Blue shook her head.

  Try me.

  She turned around.

  “Doesn’t everyone go west?” A whisper carried in a puff of cigarette smoke.

  Blue turned back.

  Don’t care about everyone. Just me.

  “Got it.” Another drag, another wave of smoke into the crisp air. “Listen, you should come with me. Rat’s got room. You could play us a song or two.”

  Pit of the stomach said no, even though loneliness said yes. She shook her head.

  Gotta keep moving. West isn’t gonna wait for me.

  “Whatever,” the girl said, dropping the butt and stubbing it out with her toe. “Don’t get caught in the cold, and be careful with that thing.” She pointed at the guitar. “Police catch you playing without a permit, you’ll get a big-ass ticket.”

  Blue strode away as if she knew exactly where she was headed. I’m a girl with a guitar and a giant backpack with a sleeping bag strapped to it in the middle of Chicago, and I was standing outside a train station. Bad, bad idea. Better to go, anywhere, as long as she looked as if she had a plan. Otherwise, someone else would be along to help her.

  She kind of needed help, though. If the girl was right, then she couldn’t count on playing to make money.

  The truth was, she didn’t have a clue what she was doing, or where she was going, or even whether she was doing it for good reasons or crazy ones. And at some point—not having a watch or a phone meant that the hours slipped by unnoticed—it was going to get dark, and colder, and she needed be somewhere safe for the night.

  Was this what Steve had dealt with every day since he’d left home?

  Blue kept walking, on and on, until she reached a park. Not the sort of park she knew from home, the kind she’d played in when she met Steve. This one looked as if it belonged someplace else, Europe maybe, with plantings of shrubs set in geometric patterns across snow-dusted stone, deserted benches along them. Past the far edge ran another road, and beyond that was the lake.

  In the middle stood a huge fountain, totally empty, all gray stone and stillness. Green sea horses rose from the waterless pools around it. She was so intent on them that she didn’t notice the one filled bench until its contents shifted. A lone figure in a familiar ski jacket sat hunched there, his knees to his chest, his eyes closed.

  She ran to Steve, her guitar bouncing against her thigh. He looked up at the slapping of her feet on the stone.

  “What are you doing here?” His eyes were red-rimmed. His nose was red, too, and there were salt marks along his cheeks.

  Walking.

  She wanted to shout at him, pick him up, and hug him. Instead, she handed him the paper.

  He shook his head. “Just walking?”

  She’d missed something big. She understood that much, but the rest was a mystery. Now that she was through feeling mad about it, she wanted to understand what it was.

  I don’t get why you left. It was just a joke. I was mad at the way people were treating me + I don’t believe all that religious stuff + they didn’t know what I was playing. Just a private joke, ha ha.

  She crouched down closer to him. It was warmer there. Well, not warmer so much as less windy. Remembering the bus stop from the night before, she leaned close, kneeling on her pack. Their bodies made a tent, a cozy world of their own.

  “It wasn’t just them you were making fun of, ’cause that’s what you were doing. Making fun. Me, you were making fun of me.”

  But how can you believe that stuff, when they don’t believe in you?

  “It’s not whether they believe in me that’s important.” His face was paler in their shadows, his lips seashell-pink waves. “My parents raised me to believe. I liked church. It’s . . . I don’t even know how to explain it to you. Everything else is so messy and noisy, and here’s a space where we all share the same words, the same things. Even when we’re not like each other. Even when I’m not like them.”

  But—

  That was the part that didn’t make sense. She’d spent her first year in Eliotville being not like anyone else, and she’d hated it, had studied Teena carefully—hair, clothes, favorite ice cream—and copied what she could. If that hadn’t worked, she would have found a cave to stay in.

  “Everyone knew. The kids at school, they picked on me. My mom would buy me these dresses, or, like, blouses with little bits of lace on them. I wouldn’t have anything else to wear, and I’d feel like, I don’t know, like that thing in the labyrinth—” Steve looked at her, and she shook her head, not sure what he was talking about. “That monster, the one that was part bull, part human. The other kids could see that it was all a costume. One time—” He stopped, shook himself free of the memory.

  “I know it’s gonna sound stupid to you, but I used to read my Bible at night. Not the scary parts, not all that bad stuff, but the parts when Jesus speaks. You know the Sermon on the Mount, that list of people who God loves? I felt like I fit there somewhere. And things got all ugly, and it wasn’t just the kids, it was my parents, pushing harder and harder, and there was this one place, you know, this place where I’d read those pages over and over and knew that there was room for me.

  “Things got so bad that I, you know, I thought maybe, about this bridge near our house.”

  She touched his hand, felt as close as if it were his heart.

  “I went there, and I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. I’d seen things online. I knew I wasn’t the only kid like me, I was just the only one like me there. I wanted everything to stop hurting, I wanted it so bad, but I stood on the bridge and I felt like I wasn’t alone, like someone was there, holding my hand. So I told myself I could always make that choice, right? I mean, the world is full of bridges. But right then, knowing about
all those bridges, I could go ahead and do whatever I wanted with life, because I’d always have a choice.”

  And the person holding your hand . . .

  She’d been more than stupid. She’d been cruel. Maybe the man in the blue shirt had been on to something when he told her she was almost ready for him.

  He nodded. “So you were laughing at me, too. At what I believe.”

  She’d been wrong. Teena’s gram had had two daughters die, and she still talked all that love and belief stuff. People hurt, and they found things that held them together, and for Steve, it was a story of the meek inheriting the earth, and for her, it was the devil who waits at the crossroads, giving and taking all at once.

  I’m sorry. I was mad + I wanted to take it out on them. I don’t think they were nice people. Not the way you are. I don’t feel bad about them, but I do about you.

  “It doesn’t make a difference if they were nice or not. It’s what you do, you know? Whether you choose to act mean or nice.”

  I’m sorry.

  She could write it again and again. The question was whether he heard it, given the flimsiness of the paper, the word.

  He looked at her, his eyes seeing deeper, further than hers did. “We should go find a place to stay, don’t you think?”

  They walked back out to the road. Traffic hurried past; the only vehicle in the metered spaces was a beat-up van with Illinois plates and a skull-and-crossbones sticker on the crumpled back fender. “Maybe we can find bagels again,” Steve was saying as the van’s passenger door swung open and the girl from Union Station stepped out.

  “Yeah, it’s them,” she called back over her shoulder. The back doors popped open, and a couple of guys got out. One grabbed Steve, an arm around his shoulder, hand resting on his mouth, like they were goofing around. The other pushed in close on his far side.